Zorá Quartet

The Zorá String Quartet won First Prize in the 2015 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. They also won the Sander Buchman Award, which sponsors their New York debut, and four concert prizes: the Friends of Music Concerts Prize (Connecticut), the Hayden's Ferry Chamber Music Series Prize (AZ), the Paramount Theatre Prize (VT), and the Vancouver Recital Society Prize. The Quartet was named the Grand Prize and Gold Medal Winner of the 42nd Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Coleman-Barstow Prize winner at the Coleman National Chamber Music Competition in 2015. As a result of winning the Fischoff Competition, they toured the Midwest and will appear at the 2016 Emilia Romagna Festival in Italy. The Zorá Quartet has performed in U.S., Canada, and Europe, at venues including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Duke’s Hall at Royal Academy of Music in England.

In the summer of 2015, Zorá quartet was a part of Chamber Music Residency at the Banff Centre and Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Zorá Quartet also participated at the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies of the Aspen Music Festival in the summer of 2014 and worked intensively with Earl Carlyss, Takács Quartet, Pacifica Quartet, and the American String Quartet. Zorá Quartet also performed in master classes for London Haydn Quartet, Keith Robinson, Koichiro Harada, members of Cleveland Quartet, The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma and Noah Bendix-Balgley.

Zorá Quartet has collaborated with the Pulitzer-prize-winning American composer Caroline Shaw to perform her works with the NOTUS Contemporary Ensemble in Fall 2013. In Spring 2014, Zorá Quartet was selected as the string quartet in residence to perform and study manuscripts at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, Germany.

Zorá String Quartet members hold graduate degrees in performance and chamber music from the Jacobs School of Music in Indiana University and were part of the Jacobs School of Music’s prestigious Chamber Music Performer’s Diploma from 2014-16. Some of their most influential mentors include the Pacifica Quartet, Atar Arad, Kevork Mardirossian, Eric Kim, and Grigory Kalinovsky.

Zorá Quartet aspire to educate individual students, serve as a mentor for collegiate-level string quartets of Indiana University, and initiate active outreach projects in Bloomington to introduce new audiences to chamber music. Part of the non-profit organization, Zorá Quartet has worked with Reimagining Opera For Kids (ROK) and performs in the Wylie House Museum, Waldron Arts Center, and the Art Museum of IU Bloomington to bridge the gap better with the local community.

Zorá String Quartet is currently the Graduate Quartet in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music, where they work closely with Shmuel Ashkenasi, Arnold Steinhardt, Pamela Frank, Steven Tenenbom, Peter Wiley and Mia Chung.

The name “Zorá" was chosen by Bulgarian professor Kevork Mardirossian; it means "sunrise" in Bulgarian.